Wednesday, July 27, 2011

ADDENDUM: We discussed Gardner's paper from the Gemes & May volume previously. Contra my analysis of the experience of willing, Reginster writes:

One problem with this proposal is that it conflates willing with successfulwilling. But it seems as though I can have an experience of willing even when mybody fails to respond, and I precisely do not feel "as if the bodily qualia areobeying the thought." When I will to move my paralyzed body, for example, I havean experience of willing, which means that I identify with a "commandeeringthought" even though it does not elicit obedience. But then this identificationcannot be motivated by the "feeling of power" that is supposed to explain itsoccurrence....

This depends on whether it is a correct account of what it feels like to will the movement of a paralyzed part of the body: I would have thought this feels like an attemp at willing, not willing. I actually address this in note 6 of the paper; it is a difficult case that turns on having more information about the phenomenology of paralysis.

Friday, July 15, 2011

Carlos, a student at UC Berkeley, is devoting a new website to the discussion of Nietzsche's texts.

The website will be conducted as a virtual reading group, where they will work through each of Nietzsche's books at a rate of approximately one aphorism per day (or four shorter maxims a day).

Carlos has begun with the text of Twilight of the Idols and invites other interested readers to comment on the reading by visiting the comment box at the bottom of each aphorism's page (which can be visited by clicking "read more" or by clicking on the title of the relevant aphorism).

About Me

Brian Leiter is Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the Center for Law, Philosophy, & Human Values at the University of Chicago. He works on a variety of topics in moral, political, and legal philosophy. His current Nietzsche-related work concerns Nietzsche's theory of agency and its intersection with recent work in empirical psychology; Nietzsche's arguments for moral skepticism; and the role of naturalism in Nietzsche's philosophy.